OLDHAM COUNTY, Ky. — The Underground Railroad was considered a slave's first step in the journey to freedom. Kentucky was a hotbed for slavery in the mid-1800s before the Civil War, but it wasn't until the 1830s that the Underground Railroad became more of an organized network.
Nancy Stearns Theiss is the director of the Oldham County History Center in La Grange. It's a museum today, but it used to be the home of James and Amanda Mount, who were very involved in the slave trade. James Mount worked as the local slave jailer.
"While the slave owners were relaxing comfortably, their slaves were secretly planning their escape, making this home, in particular, a very important part of Kentucky's Underground Railroad," Theiss said.
The Mount family has troves of original documents from the mid-1800s, including newspaper advertisements. When slaves escaped from their plantation, the Mounts used the paper to find the runaways.
"She hired bounty hunters to go after 'two negro slaves who left to join the Union,'" Theiss said.
The shrinking size of the printing press made it much easier for people to place bounties on runaways in addition to placing advertisements searching for large quantities of human labor.
It's unknown how many Underground Railroad locations there were in Kentucky - the state didn't keep good records. The Ohio River, however, was the point to cross for runaways. It was also the Mason-Dixon Line: states north of it were free, making Kentucky, in a way, a gateway to freedom.
"There were all kinds of escapes people would use. People would jump on steamboats, people would use railroads, even the canals that were built up in Cincinnati. people would follow canals trying to get north to freedom," Theiss said.
Although the horrors of slavery can be tough to learn, the fight for freedom was instrumental in shaping our world today.
"These people made great sacrifices for us to be able to live the way we do today," Theiss said. "If we forget these people then we don't do justice to all of the sacrifices they made for us and we don't appreciate where we live."
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